


We'll Make it through Somehow

by YukiRiikus_Reading_Room



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bunker Fic, Comfort/Angst, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fallen Castiel, Family Feels, Grief/Mourning, Human Castiel, Implied Relationships, M/M, Male Friendship, PTSD, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 20:40:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YukiRiikus_Reading_Room/pseuds/YukiRiikus_Reading_Room
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are nights when the bunker is not a happy place.  Everyone has nightmares, and nights when being alone just isn't an option.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We'll Make it through Somehow

There are nights when the bunker is not a happy place.

 

Sure, it’s nice to have a home for once, some place to come back to, but there are times when that’s not enough for any of them to feel okay. 

 

There are nights when Sam wakes up screaming, staring at the ceiling with tears in his eyes and a seven letter name stuck to his lips like poison.  He won’t call out to her, hasn’t in a long time, but when Dean rushes in and finds him lying there sweating like he’s been standing too close to fire, he knows Jess was in his brother’s nightmares.  He knows because he has the same dreams about their mother, even though he never saw it happen.

 

Other nights, he wakes up dreaming of Hell, shaking with a cold he can’t explain to Dean because you have to have felt that frostbite to understand it, to really know it.  Sam wakes with his arms raised to defend himself from Michael and Lucifer, from their anger in the pit with nothing to tear into but each other and his soul, his ever weakening soul.  Those nights, he pads quietly down the halls to Castiel’s room, because the angel understands most what his brother’s are capable of.  Somehow, when Cas wraps his arms around him and holds him tight, he feels safer, even with the knowledge that Castiel is no longer and angel, and the grace he used to feel like a warmth when his friend would hug him is only in his imagination.

 

There are nights when Dean wakes up remembering chains, and flayed souls, his hand immediately going for his knife under the pillow only to remember they don’t have to keep them there anymore.  It stills the panic, remembering that they can sleep without weapons immediately at hand, but it doesn’t dull the sense of guilt, or fear.  He usually paces after that, trying not to think of what he did under Alistair’s tutoring because, no matter how many times Sam or Cas or anyone tells him that it wasn’t his fault, he has trouble living with himself knowing what he did in Hell. 

 

On those nights, or the ones where he wakes thinking of his dead parents, or worse, of Ellen, Jo, Ash, Pamela, and Bobby, those are the nights he creeps to Castiel’s room.  He never knocks, because he knows Cas doesn’t mind when he pushes his way into the room, into his bed and his arms.  The former angel will lay there and hold him, stroking his hair or kissing his freckles, until the tears stop, until the shaking calms. 

 

After one of these nights, when the tears have been stemmed and he sits back up to stare at Castiel’s compassionate eyes surveying his face carefully, Dean kisses him for the first time.  It’s not particulary finesed, and more than a little rough and desperate, but there’s a sweetness to the way he digs his fingers into Cas’s shoulders like he’s the only thing keeping him grounded, and the angel can’t get enough. 

 

The nights he sleeps best after that are the nights when they share the same bed.

 

Sometimes, when they’ve had a particularly hard case or they run into another former angel, Castiel has nightmares that make him scream and thrash around in his bed.  the first time it happens, he breaks a lamp, and the Winchesters have to hold him down until he comes back into himself and calms down.  After the first time, every single time one of them worries something might have upset Cas during the day, as soon as they get home Dean carries Cas into the living room while Sam makes the popcorn and grabs the beer.  They stay up all night with him until he finally nods off, both of them holding onto him tightly to keep him grounded, to make him feel safe.

 

The bunker isn’t always enough to make them happy.

But the three of them?  They’re always enough to keep each other okay.


End file.
